She squeezed past Will and Hugh into the free space next to Ryan, and with a sinking feeling Hannah realized that the final free space, the only one left for her, was next to Will.
They looked at each other, and she could tell that he was having the same misgivings as she—and coming to the same realization: that there was no plausible reason to rearrange the seating, at least not without raising eyebrows. The free seat was one in from the aisle, between Will and Hugh. Even if Hannah pretended that she had forgotten something or needed the loo, the only logical rearrangement would be for Will to move up one next to Hugh and leave her with the aisle. There was no possible excuse she could find to move herself farther down the row.
Will gave a small resigned smile, and she knew that he had just gone through exactly the same mental calculation, and was trying to signal that it was okay. That they could still sit next to each other. The theater wouldn’t burn down around them if they sat a few inches apart for a couple of hours.
Still, it was with a sense that she was doing something very stupid that Hannah slid into the seat between Hugh and Will. She sat there mutely, listening to Ryan and Emily bickering good-naturedly farther up the row, and Hugh muttering his revision notes under his breath. And all the time she was horribly conscious of her cardigan-clad arm just millimeters away from Will’s shoulder. He had his hands pressed between his knees, as if to make his body as small as possible and keep his hands as far away from her as he could, but the seats were narrow, and Hugh was unselfconsciously man-spreading on her other side. It was all Hannah could do to keep her arm from touching Will’s, her knee from grazing his, and as the lights went down and the auditorium fell into silence, the sense of intimacy only increased.
She had never been so conscious of her body, of the heat of someone else’s skin, of the sound of their breathing and of every minute movement they each made. As the hush descended and the darkness enveloped them both, Hannah found that she was holding her breath in an effort to keep every muscle strained away from Will, and she was forced to let it out with a shaky rush.
“Are you okay?” Hugh whispered beside her, and she nodded.
“Yes, sorry. Just a—a sneeze that didn’t go anywhere.”
It was a stupid excuse, but Hugh seemed to accept it for what it was. Still, Hannah wanted to kick herself.
A single spotlight came up on the stage, and as it did so, she felt something—the lightest, gentlest touch on her knee, the knee closest to Will. It was only for a moment—and so softly that under other circumstances she would have thought she’d imagined it—but with every muscle attuned to his presence, she knew she had not, and it was all she could do to stop herself from jumping.
She knew what it meant, though. What Will was trying to convey.
It’s okay.
She shut her eyes, pressed her fists against them. It’s okay. It’s okay. It will all be okay.
And then she opened them—and a girl was there, standing in the narrow pool of light. It wasn’t April—it was someone Hannah didn’t know—but she leaned forward, glad of the distraction from her own thoughts.
“I wish to God that ship had never sailed.” The girl’s voice rang clear from the stage, and the production had begun.
* * *
“BLOODY HELL,” RYAN’S VOICE, RAISED over the hubbub of the intermission bar, was grudgingly impressed. “She’s pretty amazing. Did you know she was this good?” He turned to Will, who shook his head.
“No, I mean—I knew she was good. She was in a couple of plays at school, I didn’t see them but my girlfriend at the time was in them and she always said April was a good actress, but I had no idea she was this good.”
Good did not begin to cover it, Hannah thought. April was not good. She was electrifying. Hannah could not even have said why—it wasn’t her looks. The director had gone with the strange choice of making the cast up to look like characters on a Greek urn, with jet-black wigs, terra-cotta skin, and heavy kohl eyeliner, so physically it was actually pretty hard to tell the actors apart onstage. It wasn’t her technique, although that was fine. There were people in the cast who delivered the lines better, and more accurately, with more expression and animation.
It was something else. When she was onstage it was impossible to tear your eyes from her, even when someone else was speaking. When she left, she left behind a hole that made you unable to forget her absence, and Hannah found herself looking eagerly at the wings, wondering when she would next come on.